Summit day — Abi Himal

3:30am wake-up call for the summit. To our delight it was only about -10°C, practically balmy compared with what was expected. The weather was, in fact, absolutely perfect: mild, no wind, cloudless. The catch is that perfect human conditions also mean soft snow, weakening ice seracs, and dangerous rockfall on the glacier descent — which we'd be doing in high sun, two hours after our two-hour descent from the summit. Full sun on the face by 7am.

The summit took three hours of gruelling ice axe, crampon and step-kicking up a 50-degree ice wall to the summit ridge. Jackson, Lui and I were the first up, at 8am Nepal time. The narrow ice ridge gave us a 360-degree view of the entire Khumbu region — Ama Dablam, Nuptse, Lhotse, Everest, Cholatse, Makalu, Cho Oyu. Stunning. Niall and Bic followed shortly after. Julie was too sick to make it and turned back. Dora was simply too incompetent and was ordered back.

The descent was eventful too. The north face of Abi Himal was rapidly losing condition as the morning warmed. During a rappel on the third pitch from the ridge, a small ice serac gave way — thankfully below my ice anchor protection, not above it. I just had to lock my rope into my rappel device and ice-axe back onto the route. The serac fell into an avalanche running to my left and didn't take anyone on the fixed lines below me.

The rappel down the glacier was even more treacherous than yesterday's near miss — ice screws popping out all over the place, more rockfall, and sections of rope severely frayed by constant rubbing on rocks. Absolutely fucking terrifying.

All the team are now safely back in base camp. We're all quite ill and weak — this is our 8th day above 5,000m and our 12th above 4,000m. We start our four-day descent tomorrow. Looking forward to a hot shower, a cold beer, and a day where I don't have to walk anywhere. I'm broken.